


How the Bear tormented the Wolverine

by Drunk_Scarran



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Wolverine (Comics), Wolverine (Movies), Wolverine and the X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Bears, Blood and Gore, Bows & Arrows, Cavemen, Choking, Deadpool being Deadpool, Fur, Healing, Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, Impaled, Marvel Universe, Movie: X-Men (2000), Not Beta Read, Physical Abuse, Powerlessness, Spears, Whump, Wolverine - Freeform, Wolverine whump, X-Men References, hurt Wolverine, stabbed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:00:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25317190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drunk_Scarran/pseuds/Drunk_Scarran
Summary: While Wolverines are very brave and would fight much bigger enemies, there are still times something like a bear can manage to make their life a hell...In which Logan is faced with the work of a violent bear, suffers from it, and badly feels one downside of being able to survive such punishment. Lots of hurt coming, no comfort (unless you squint really hard at the end).Sorry, not beta read, conclusion coming soon!
Kudos: 1





	1. Setting the torment up

**Author's Note:**

> Note: I might be setting up a weird reveal later on (a surprise!) as this fic is distantly linked to two others I wrote. But I promise this one can be enjoyed on its own, without reading anything else first. For anyone still confused after the reveal, there will be a quick explanation at the very end as to what the hell that was.

He had been momentarily distracted and blinded at once, as, no matter how quickly he healed and how familiar he was with suffering, he could still feel pain. His skeleton was covered in metal, and unlike Colossus, his skin wasn’t. His flesh could still be damaged and bring on the immediate hindrance and agony one could expect the injuries to. For the seconds it took him to become whole again, he could not as quickly and instantly wipe the blood fully away or stop his nerves from sending overwhelming alarms signals to his brain. It had been enough to throw off the Wolverine’s next evasive maneuver and allow one of the last two opponents left standing the perfect opening to correct his strike and hit flesh where he could. That became one lucky shot the Wolverine instantly and thoroughly regretted having been unable to deflect…

...

It all begun one dark night and with a mission to grab from a clandestine lab what he’d refer yet another mad scientist. A man wanted alive, who needed to be stopped but also to face the charges for his crimes. The scientist’s own security had been quickly dealt with, and the reduced X-men team deployed had already started escorting the man to their jet waiting for them in a nearby abandoned railway depot. They thought they didn’t need the heavy hitters on this one mission, and so a few of the members weren’t the most experienced either. Some were more like kids eager to take the test of the field on what had been meant as a easy mission. Though a third party had apparently decided to join the game and crash that mission, making it obvious they had no intention of letting the mad scientist be taken in by the team of mutants. They outnumbered the X team on location, and should the newcomers be allowed to swarm the X-men, they would threaten to take off the scientist long before his new mostly inexperienced bodyguards could fight back. The Wolverine had decided then that the best option was for him to remain behind and take on the enemies on his own, with the hope he could keep them busy long enough or get rid of them all fast enough to allow the rest of the team a clean escape. He oversaw the kids’ life after all, and so he would have not had it any other way.

The first wave of enemies, half a dozen men or so, had attacked back at the hidden lab, and the Wolverine managed to dispatch them in a close quarter fight while the other X-Men made their way out of the building. He didn’t have all the time in the world to stop and reflect on who he was facing, knowing he had to join the others outside and escort them in case more enemies came. Though he caught his first good look at them when he quickly scanned the dead or maimed bodies he had spread across the lab floor and through the corridors. They had been attacking him with all sorts of machetes, knives, and clubs instead of good old classic firearms, but that was not the end of their oddity. They seemed to be wearing some black fur on bracers and shin guards, and more draped across their chest like a vest, or thrown over their back like capes. The dark masses on their head the Wolverine had noted during the fight? He could see with perplexity these were bear heads, skinned or taxidermized into the pelt hoods, like cliché Viking or barbarian fashion statement.

Strange. Still, of all the years the Wolverine remembered of his long life, this wouldn’t be the strangest costumes he had witnessed. He had to keep moving, he had to get out of this old decrepit building and catch up on the kids and the scientist. He set off into the night, out the door and headed through the empty street toward the railway depot, all in a steady jog. He was satisfied when the earpiece he was wearing crackled to life with a message from the rest of the team, announcing they had reached the jet and would soon lift off. They were less than a quarter of a mile away then, and the Wolverine pressed forth, assuring in a grunt he’d be there shortly. Though by the time he made it to the fence surrounding the abandoned railway depot, he started to catch glimpses of movement at the corner of his eyes, more and more as he entered the property supposed to be deserted. 

A moment after, a voice of one of the kids rang in his ear, warning him that the enemy had apparently found them again or had been waiting for them, and that more men had started surrounding the jet. The Wolverine could hear one mutant from the team was eager to leave the vehicle and face off against the enemies, but Logan didn’t have a good enough take on the battlefield to encourage someone at his charge to dive in headfirst. It could easily be a trap, and while he was now picking up the pace in hope to quickly cross the distance to the jet, he ordered the rest of the team to not engage and take off instead. They could always rendezvous elsewhere or call them back if he managed to take care of the threat, but in the meantime, the Wolverine needed the gang away and safe. There were some protests, but the Wolverine was able to shut it down over the coms as he kept jogging forth, insisting some more until he could see the lights in the distance, the glow of the jet lifting off ground before flying away in the night sky. 

The Wolverine could have stopped then or backtracked and left the depot in order to find another way home. But the light from the jet allowed him to see what laid numerous yards ahead, passed two wagons parked over a dozen feet apart. He could spot the forms of the men who had tried catching the rest of the X team, see they were still grouped and were now turning toward him. He could tell from their hirsute silhouette that chances were these were an additional load of fur-clad men like those who had tried hacking his head off earlier. More of the strange opponents he could not allow to follow him or try to interfere again with his business. He could tell some were already moving careful forth, in the distance, and so he supposed he was right to believe they would not leave him alone either, even now that the scientist they were here for had left the area. He’d be justified to try and stop them, try to discourage them from pursuing him, or try to interrogate at least one of them to tell him who had sent them after the mad scientist.

The Wolverine would face them, then. And so, he didn’t stop his rapid jog but rather hurried the pace until he would have almost reached the train parts left in the way. The fastest path was through, between the two abandoned wagons, even more so as some of his opponents seemed to be intended on flowing into the corridor it formed, from the other side. The fur-clad enemies apparently made it to the optimal distance for them to begin a ranged attack on Wolverine. They had started going wild with unusual projectiles, beginning to launch a wave of serrated arrows at first, whizzing through the air in flashes of pale threats. The Wolverine had pressed on in his sprint, picking up speed, gritting his teeth as he let the anger flow through his veins and awaken his muscles. Soon the arrows were joined with a few throwing knives, even sharp stones thrown from slingers, David versus Goliath style, coming from the line of henchmen he had noticed on the ground, but as well as from the top of the abandoned train wagons. He had perceived motion from up there earlier, though had not anticipated to find more than one spotter hiding above ground, sniping down on him from their vantage point. Well, now it made for even more sharp things to try and evade, even if only in the name of avoiding getting slowed down too much by too many injuries at once. He’d deal with the train top monkeys once he was done with their buddies on the ground anyway, so he reflected…

Regardless, there were no firearms in sights either, as perplexing as it was. A very odd choice, though could he really say he was that surprised, in his line of work? The Wolverine had a lot on his plate when the rain of projectiles began, and perhaps too much on his plate to waste time asking questions or analyzing the situation in depth. He had already felt the searing pain of a few sharp rocks and arrows bouncing off his skull, leaving gouges in his skin along the way, and some more brushing against his shoulders and thighs when he could not swipe at them before they would reach him. Still, he could pick up on edifying details from this fight and the previous one back at the lab. Despite their weapons of choice and their attire, they did not necessarily seem like a bunch of crazy brain-washed cavemen. They rather seemed more like the second-rate mercenary type, the ex-military kind of henchmen too rusty or thick-headed to be picky when they were offered a good pay, to the point they would half-heartedly indulge in whatever eccentricity their employer would have in stock for them if it meant getting paid to do so. Some had the haircut or the tattoos visible in the low light, or the stance and body type for it; anyone having fought hundreds of them as the Wolverine had done didn’t need more details to recognize the type. 

Of course, such henchmen tended to be clad in dark paramilitary clothes or suit tracks usually, and above all, they tended to wield automatic firearms of all kind instead. If he had not been busy trying to avoid the first wave of sharp objects now flung at him from the distance, the Wolverine would have shaken his head more than once and whatever ridiculous theme his opponents had going. It was all happening in the space of a few seconds, after all, his animal instincts and his adrenaline not enough to slow down time so much. He had to cut the distance between his claws and his enemies, and he had to cross these empty yards, then the wagon train canyon and fast. Though perhaps his reflections on the enemies had been enough distraction for him to miss one of the projectiles, or perhaps one of the mooks had gotten lucky. Either way, the Wolverine could only cry out in rage and agony when fiery pain exploded in one of his calves.

The pain of the initial injury, but also of the hard intrusion into his muscle caused his leg to give way underneath him, the mutant stumbling and coming crashing down hard in the dirty gravel of the ground. He tried to crouch and put weight on his legs again, expecting to be able to power through the pain and stand up fast, but the ache only flared up more furiously as it jarred a foreign body deeply set in his wound. The man glanced down to find an arrow lodged into his calf muscles, with the tip poking out of his flesh on the opposite side, slick with blood. He knew he wouldn’t be able to heal until the arrow would be fully out, and he didn’t have the luxury to spare too much time on the question, seeing how even more projectiles kept raining down on him or whizzing past. It was probably only a lack of skills from his assailants that kept him from being pierced with more of these already.

He tried pulling the arrow out by the shaft at first, though could only stop with a cry of frustration and pain when he felt the sickening sensation of long barbs gripping at his flesh from the inside, tearing into more muscle that he was ready to spare on the moment. He instinctively switched to another tactic instead, and rather than pull on the arrow shaft and risk taking out a chunk of his own leg with it, he opted for pushing the arrow deeper in. The barbs would only slid deeper and in a smoother way in until the arrowhead would fully emerge on the other side of his leg, where he’d only need to cut off the wooden shaft under the arrow head, and then pull out a much less damaging smooth wooden stick. He gritted his teeth; it still hurt like a bitch to manually force an arrow through one’s own flesh back and forth, or to jolt the whole thing with his claws when cutting off the barbed arrowhead. But it had to be done. 

He roared out in pain yet managed successfully. The two pieces of the arrow were thrown on the ground with a furious gesture. It wasn’t his first arrow injury, far from it: it barely took him 4 seconds or so to free himself from the offending object, once he had changed his tactic. Still, while in the middle of a charge and under a hail of more projectiles, this was too much time wasted. By the time he could push back to his feet and face his enemies again, the gaping wound left to heal on its own, several them were already through the corridor the wagons formed, ready to face the Wolverine at close quarter. He could only hope not to find more serated and barbed surprises waiting for him.

TBC


	2. Lucky shots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bringing in the real whump.
> 
> TW for eye injury mentioned though not really described

Here the Wolverine was, faced with a bunch of cretins dressed as black bears, and yet presenting pretty sharp weapons. An arrow had already found his flesh and left the inside of his muscle torn and bloody, something he’d remember even after his healing factor would have made the hole close up. While there had been a number of the fur-clad enemies going for quite irritating range attacks until now, other fur-clad henchmen had changed their tactic and began advancing with what seemed to be ragged thorny stone-tipped spears, carefully fanning out to attack the Wolverine from as many angles at once as they could. 

The latter would have scoffed at these idiots, and at how they looked like cavemen about to go mammoth hunting. Though as he put his energies into launching himself forth a second time -while also blocking and deflecting the rain of projectiles with his adamantium claws- in the fraction of second he had to ponder on the situation, he realized he’d soon have to fend off these sinister looking spears thrusted at him as well.

He reached his first armed opponents, one who dared stepping forth and too close. The Wolverine swiped at a spear aimed at him, cutting off the shaft with the claws of one arm, before he would pivot and aim the other set of claws at second henchman who tried attacking him from the back. The mutant moved swiftly in a familiar yet bloody ballet, keeping on the ball of his feet so to slice and dice and fend off as many limbs or weapons as he could while his enemies would try swarming him at once. The costumed mercenaries who had attacked with ranged tactics at first had seemingly reduced their firing rate, as if to avoid causing some friendly fire in the tangle of fighters. 

Before long, three men had backed off from the flurry with unusable weapons, one man laid screaming in agony on the ground, and four enemies were already dead and silent in the gravel. More of them still kept coming, and the moment Wolverine’s fighting moves brought him a few steps away enough from any enemy, one of those perched on the top of the abandoned freight wagons would take their chance making it rain arrows and sharp objects of all kind on him. He arched in pain when a thud in his back was mixed with the sickening squishing sound of flesh being split open, blood splashing out. Something had hit him in the flesh right between his spine and shoulder blade, the pain momentarily taking his breath away, while the weight of the attack had him stumble one step forth.

He gritted his teeth as he twisted to reach what was still lodged in his back, hurrying to reach for whatever it was before the distraction would keep him exposed too long. He backed from approaching opponents, his free hand came upon a handle, whatever was lodged there almost paralyzing the side it had chopped into. A cry of rage and pain was torn out of his throat when he pulled out what a brief glance revealed to be some short hatchet, probably thrown from above. No time to think or to wait for his flesh to mend fully in his back: more of the cavemen wannabe stepped over their downed friends and lunged forward. He parried and sliced through two of them in two efficient movements for each, even if the mending flesh was burning and throbbing in his back, flaring one last time when his swipes stretched the gash briefly back open.

A spear was thrusted at him as he moved to another enemy who tried swinging at him, and he only barely had time to avoid getting entirely skewered. One fur-clad man went down with a cry under the mutant’s claws, but the other man tore a cry out of the Wolverine. This one had managed to slice into the Wolverine’s upper arm with his barbed spear, the attack having bounced off an adamantium-covered humerus instead of fully chopping the limb off. 

The fact it had not been a full amputation didn’t mean it was a walk in the park either: the muscle damage and the flash of pain momentarily paralyzed that arm, leaving this side of the Wolverine’s body opened to a machete swung at him. He managed to move mostly out of the way, getting only something a little bit deeper than a scratch on a thigh out of it. Most of the pain that followed his evasive maneuver came from his not yet healed sliced arm jarred as it swung with the momentum. Though the ache climbing up and down regenerating nerves and flesh only fueled the Wolverine’s rage further.

He let out a guttural war cry, spinning in a flurry of metal claws until the remaining men hounding him on this level were down on the ground, unconscious or dead. It surely wasn’t over, however, as arrows began to whizz toward him once again, this time coming from the few enemies remaining on their perch on top of the freight wagons. The Wolverine roared again as he launched himself at the walls of the nearest wagon, grasping to what he could or making his own grip with his claws, climbing swiftly in a matter of a few calculated moves. He propelled himself upward and landed on the roof in a crouch, in the process swiping at an enemy who stood a bit too close to the edge.

Before the human body touched the gravel down below, the Wolverine was already pouncing forth again, taking down one more man then another with two more slashes of his claws. Seven more moves and a trio of enemies collapsed on the roof or down along the wagon. Then there were only two enemies left on top of that wagon. And even if one seemed much beefier than the others, so he could tell in the fraction of second he had to analyze the situation, he believed he would be done with them pretty fast. Rnough so he could soon move to taking care of whoever would be left. So he pivoted on himself to face the others, and extended his arms to his side, preparing to parry the two enemies’ spears and strike them.

That is when another lucky arrow hit him, the distraction that would cost him dearly. Coming from the side, the barbed projectile flew almost parallel to his forehead, or so until the deviation in its trajectory had the sharp edge slash across one of his eyes, slice over his nose bridge, and shred into his other eyebrow before continuing into the night. No matter how much a creature like him could get used to suffering, some experiences could only call upon the most primitive parts of his mind, overwhelming him with alarm signals.

The agony in the one hit eye and the visceral panic the injury caused inside of him had him half curl onto himself defensively, hands instinctively flying to his mauled flesh, fingers crispated hard as if they had a mind of their own and wanted to claw the pain out. His brow was already starting to heal, but the burst of blood coming from the tears had blinded his one intact eye, as if it did not hurt enough already to prevent any logical thought or perceptive take of his environment. He couldn’t forget there was still danger around him, no matter how much the blinding pain had left him disoriented for these precious seconds.

With a groan, the Wolverine forced himself to unfold and stand straight again, and blinked his good eye through the blood, desperate to take control of the situation again. Still, he didn’t have time to wonder when the wounded eye would stop feeling like it was being pierced again, nor when the globe and the eyelids would mend and be usable again. It had all been enough for the largest of the two enemies remaining to see in this an opportunity and attack. The bigger man thrusted his thorny spear forward, straight at the Wolverine’s torso. It was all happening so fast, and the partly blind mutant’s reflexes kicked in too late for his attempt at dodging to be fully efficient.

Surely he twisted in an attempt at moving out of the way entirely, aiming at having the spear brush past the small of his back without causing too much damage. Yet in his distracted state, he miscalculated, he didn’t step forth as much as he was meant to. And he knew with a single though, a crystal clear but unique thought in the void his mind was turned into then, he knew he was being hit right in the flank on one side, under his ribs. He was hit, and it was the only thing his brain knew in this very moment; hit so hard to such a large volume of his flesh that it felt like being hit by a cannon ball.

A cannon ball that kept on crushing far into his insides, deep within, not stopping its flight, passing through to crush and paralyses his diaphragm, and explode in one side of his chest. Air had been entirely forced out of his lung as if the cannon ball had swollen from the inside out, and the night sky seemed to burst into a dulled red shimmer. The Wolverine couldn’t know anything of how his body was positioned in space or if he could feel anything but the pressure inside of his chest. For a fraction of second, he couldn’t believe he might still have been standing on his feet, until the microscopic moment he could spare realizing the pressure had rather shifted into the impression of being hooked up by his chest, or held in place as if pinned to a wall as he had experienced in his life before.

But then the infinitely short moment was gone, and the pain slammed into the Wolverine like the whole tank following the cannon ball. He wanted to cry out yet there still was no air in his lung, not even enough for anything more than a croaking gurgling hint of a gasp. His now healed eyes where bulging with the pain and crushing strangulating feeling of having his insides torn apart, veins popping on his forehead and neck as if there was nothing to him but squeezed mangled flesh. 

Shaking hands went to cross over his abdomen and chest at first, moving in dumbfounded movements, as if desperate to find a way to prevent his innards from getting out. And yet he only found intact yet throbbing flesh, nothing like getting himself sliced open by a sword. And the pain was wrong, so wrong, his upper body was if completely stiff and frozen in place with an abominable ache. Stunned, the Wolverine looked down on himself, and the scene was almost foreign to him when he saw a long wooden shaft sticking out of one side, somewhere between the lowest ribs and his hip bone. It had gotten in at an angle, an alarming angle, very pronounced and suggesting an horrible path inside of him.

Oh god! He had been pierced through, pierced deeply through when the enemy had thrusted with all of his strength. The spear head had managed to avoid the ribs on one side, and the spine on its way. The Wolverine jolted, as if his body tried to twist and allow him to study his injury better, but the pain exploded tenfold inside of him, right through him, like searing hot pipe of near molten metal, forming like a bar that kept him from bending his torso in any way. The horrible pain tore him through the liver then part of the stomach, right across to the lung and ribs opposite to where the wooden shaft was sticking out of, as if the weapon had been pushed at a steep upward angle through him.

Through the haze of the shock and agony, a second thought appeared in the void of his mind: that was the path of the agony tearing his insides because it had been the path of the spear. Part of his mind had not wanted to believe it at first, but through the suffocating ache cramping his entire upper body or almost, he could almost discern the long shaft of the spear, diagonal. That and more horrors, the spear head pressing against the ribs almost under his armpit, putting an excruciating pressure onto them from the inside out, as if ready to burst out from there.

He suddenly felt incredibly dizzy, from the horror of the realization, the overwhelming agony, the offense of the violation at having his flesh and insides so thoroughly damaged. This was not like the regular impaling he had lived through before, it was not like being simply pined perpendicularly, it was much more, much worse. And he wondered when he had drawn in a breath for the last time, a question which prompted him into an instinctive and almost panicked attempted at taking in a breath.

And entire side of his chest burned savagely in a blinding flash, one lung entirely torn and immobilized where the shaft of the spear and the spearhead ran diagonally through. The other side of his chest was barely faring better, with the damaged to his upper abdomen and diaphragm causing his working lung to seize up with the additional pain. The Wolverine let out a strangled wheeze, unable to fight the moisture welling to his eyes at the sensation of being so completely crushed from the inside, the air barely getting into him to oxygenate his blood. Worse, it did not stop, as his organism could not heal fully for as long as the foreign object was inside of him.

Blood there was, flowing warm against his wounded flank, and sitting thick at the back of his throat. He had bled worse on the outside than that, but even as his body could heal fast, he knew the pressure of the blood pulling on the inside. He felt his knees almost giving way under his weight, the shock and suffering from this ghastly injury proving overwhelming even to his mutant body. He didn’t fall to the ground however, no, it was all… more wrong than that. He wasn’t allowed to fall. 

Something from the inside was tugging him upward, holding him up with tearing pain that ripped a gurgling cry even from his half collapsed, half drowning oxygen-starved lungs. He was being held in place by the spear inside of him, braced through his flesh and ribs. The Wolverine’s addled brain took a moment to wonder what had caught the spear going through him, hooking him up like a piece of meat. His vision still blurred, having to twist his neck since he could not move his torso against the bar going through it, his attention went to the meaty hands on the spear shaft. Then it went to the burly fur-clad arms attached to the hands, then to the smirking face of the mercenary the arms belonged to.

Instead of letting it go, the enemy had simply hung onto his weapon after having shoved it deeply through the mutant’s flank. That enemy’s face seemed to show a sadistic triumph, as if taking pleasure at having their violent opponent finally immobilized and too wounded to simply shrug it off this time. The other fur-clad henchman’s face came swimming into the Wolverine’s blurry vision, the human sneering at the animal they had finally managed to calm down. All it took was to turn the mad beast into a glorified askew kebab, and make sure it was still completely splintered in place from the inside out. 

The second man grew even as bold as to step closer to the Wolverine frozen on his two feet, the human bold and disdainful enough to use this to mock the hunter turned prey. Though that vision was enough to slap the said beast out of its stupor. Awaken! Don’t let the grizzly torn flesh make you forget how dangerous wounded animals are meant to be! A different burning ache seemed to come from deep within, somewhere superposing the mangled innards. The dam burst opened, and a pure fury started to flow through the Wolverine. It was to fuel his vengeance in spite of the sorry state he was in.

It was rage and desperation, the last burst of murderous instinct one would expect from a fatally wounded animal. The Wolverine sprung up arms he did not remember letting hang limply, and thrusted his claws at the smaller sneering enemy. He opened up that man’s throat from the collarbone to the tongue. The larger enemy was surprised by this sudden outburst coming from the prey he believed vanquished, and tugged on the spear as one would tug on a dog’s leash. Agony flashed red across the Wolverine’s vision, whatever piece of flesh had had time to heal around the spear inside of him now ripped and torn open again to a vicious ball -or rather ‘tube’- of stabbing pains. 

The Wolverine’s knees threatened to collapse underneath him again, but he used his renewed rage to push through the drop of blood pressure, and become a flurry of destruction again. The spear shaft the enemy held onto put a rigid and painful distance between them that prevented the mutant from reaching out for the kill. The latter saw only one option in order to be allowed to approach. One split second decision later, the Wolverine was slashing with his claws, out at the spear shaft between his enemy and his ugly wound. The wood was chopped through, the spear shortened dramatically. The leverage was gone instantly from the meaty hands, and this made him only push at thin air. It caused the large enemy to stumble forward, now at last within the Wolverine’s reach.

The Wolverine could push out a roar of rage in spite of how he was already choking in pain, crushed, and drowning in his own blood. He forced his two fists forward, piercing into the beefy enemy in the chest with his claws and all the strength he could muster, managing even to add weight into it with steps forth as well. 

He could feel the life leaving his tormentor, the useless brawn starting to go limp, slowly folding and falling backward.

The body starting to fall backward, and the Wolverine’s numb mind realized he was being pulled along as well by the weight of the other man, his claws having remained lodged in the human’s ribs. He hurried to retract them out of the body, and he attempted to catch his balance. It was in vain, as the spear forced such a rigidity to his torso, and the pain of even trying to move flared up so fiercely he couldn’t do enough in time. 

Alarms blared in his mind as he toppled over the edge of the wagon’s roof, on a trajectory straight to the cold hard ground. Another unobjectionable truth came to him: this was going to hurt even more.

TBC


End file.
